I threw my hands up on the whole thing a few years ago.  It was all just too much.  Coming up with a fun idea and then multiple trips to the fabric store, followed by the craft store, followed by hand sewing and glueing of feathers at 2 am.  Only to have those fun ideas and feathery frocks unapologetically rebuffed by a kid who just wanted to be a princess.  Not an original princess…the kind that comes in a plastic bag and is found in aisle 12.  I just couldn’t do it anymore.  Too much work, too much work all around. I had to give up on homemade Halloween.

I feel like I’ve given up on a lot of the ideas I had about the kind of parent I would be.  I’ve only been at this parenting thing for not-quite 7 years, but the list of prime parenting stuff I’ve already given up on feels so long.  I mostly blame my mom for all those ideas, because she was just so darn good at it….she made it look easy.  But it’s not.  Not for her, not for me, not for anyone who’s trying to do it right.

And this whole Halloween costume stuff is especially hard for me.  My mom made some great costumes for my sister and I, largely with stuff from around the house.  There was one year when I was a pig’s head on a platter, complete with an apple in my mouth that I’d have to spit out at each door to recite the magical candy-generating incantation. Continue reading →